Writing and coffee… This way lies madness

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Okay, so this is the first time I’ve ever done an author interview. And I might have set the bar incredibly high with my first interviewee. S.K. Sophia is a Beta reader for me, therefore she’s beyond brilliant. She’s also a scarily talented writer who has me quite literally gripped to the edge of my seat and screaming like a little fangirl every time she uploads a chapter of her book, Finding Elyssia. Of which you can read here: Finding Elyssia. Anyhow, we may as well get started!

What are you currently working on?

Finding Elyssia. It’s about a narcissistic and unstable girl who just gets out of prison. She wants to get her life together, but is befriended by ex-convict, Noah. He went to prison for murder. Long story short – She wants to get better. He doesn’t. Chaos ensues.

Name 3 weapons you would use against invading aliens and why?

I would have sais attached to my wrist, a katana riding my back and a Mossberg 500 shotgun in my hands. The sais are for close encounters and throwing. The katana is for quiet, close combat. The shotgun is for messy and noisy fun.

If you could go back in time with a copy of one book and claim to be the author, whose book would you steal and why?

I’d feel too guilty to do something like that, but if I did, I would claim Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella. That book made me laugh and fall in love with the 20s party scene.

What was the first ever book/album/film you can remember buying?

I bought a monster joke book at my school’s book fair. God knows why. The jokes were terrible.

There’s a zombie apocalypse coming. You’re only allowed to hide in a famous building/landscape. Where would you hide and why?

I’d lurk on the top of Eiffel Tower. Let’s see those fuckers climb that thing. Wait… these are dopey Walking Dead style zombies, right? No? Shit. There’s nowhere suitable to hide. I’ll stay outside and fight, eventually dying a hero.

Would you rather be a unicorn or a vampire?

Vampire. I mean, c’mon! Unicorn? What would I even do? Vampires are the coolest. I can wear a long black leather coat and drink blood cocktails. Come at me, bro.

What is the meanest thing you’ve ever subjected a character to?

I can’t tell you because it’s the biggest spoiler for Finding Elyssia, but let me tell you, it is evil at its most raw. I felt sick writing it (and I’m not easily sickened by something).

If you could be a character in a book, and live in their world, who would you be and why?

Can I choose a comic book character? I was going to say Kitty in Astonishing X-Men, but I recently started Young Avengers and I love Kate Bishop (Hawkeye). So, I choose her. No, wait – Faith in Angel & Faith. I forgot about her for a second. It’s always Faith. She’s my fictional soul mate. We would totally be best friends and cause havoc together (but she would apologize afterwards because of the whole redemption thing. Ugh, such a drag).

Someone has told you that you are taking part in NaNoWriMo or else you will be subjected to the music you hate most for the rest of your life. What would you write about and if you failed, what music would be playing?

I’d probably write something that starts off really light and funny but slowly turns into a dark story about torture and death. Off the top of my head, I’d say people get trapped in a haunted house at an amusement park, with a sadistic killer. If I fail, pop music would be playing.

If you ever got really rich and famous, what would you do with your first million (assuming you earned that much) and who would you want to play you in a biographical film?

I would still do what I do when I’m broke – use the money to change lives. But that’s not all I would do. I’d travel to comic cons all over the world, buy a cozy little house with a fireplace, get a bunch of dogs, and buy awesome clothes that make me look like an assassin. Also, I have a huge passion for weapons (mainly the mechanics) so I’d start collecting and building my own weapons.

Drew Barrymore would play me in a film about me. I’m not a hardcore fan, but she’d be perfect.

What would you call an autobiography if you wrote one?

Um… Curly fries taste better than straight fries even though they’re basically the same. This is a difficult question. I’m terrible with names. I’ll probably call my children things like potato or gizmo.

When did you decide to become a writer and why?

I always knew this was what I wanted. I love stories. I used to read so much that my mum had to come into my room and tell me to stop. My parents never really bought me books, so I read anything I could get my hands on and reread unreturned library books (I know, I know, sorry). I used to write short stories and take them into school to show teachers. They would pass them on to the principal, gush about me to students, enter me into competitions, but I lost motivation for it until I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and reading Sophie Kinsella books. I don’t just want my writing to change people. I want it to educate them. I want to help readers accept themselves no matter how dark or scary their minds are, because the moment you feel inferior and excluded, you use your darkness to do even darker things.

Marvel or DC?

Marvel, but DC is cool.

Do you ever base your characters/events in your stories from real life?

Not intentionally, but it happens to me a lot. Reality and fiction constantly bleeds into each other. I explore a lot of my darkest fears through Elyssia in Finding Elyssia. Right now I’m her before she becomes a whiny bitch, so I still have that to look forward to. Ha!

You’ve mentioned that one of your works The Mechanics of a Broken Brain is partly made up of your own diary entries. Did you find that particularly difficult to publish online where people can see it?

No, because people don’t know which entries are my own. That makes it a whole lot easier. Although, I have to admit, I feel shy about sharing it with people I know. Just in case they, you know, guess.

Invent a word and a definition for it.

Destructo – Something that’s been destroyed but still works as normal. For example, “That girl is a destructo! Her Twitter name must be Destructo Girl. Haha! So lame. Let’s go smoke a joint.”

It’s a quote from William Faulkner. It’s an upcoming movie. It’s what Stephen King advises writers to do with added description/scenes, even when you love them…

And it’s what I think we should do with our characters.

There seems to be a large amount of books streaming in where the characters who die re-emerge, either because they are now a vampire/zombie/ghost, they were in on a plan to stop the villain that meant they had to play dead and scare everyone to death, or because they were really wounded but now they’re alive and possibly being held hostage etc.

My point is (if you actually understood any of this) that characters do not stay dead nowadays. They are as difficult to put down as a cockroach in a nuclear factory (sorry for the bad metaphor). And I’m starting to think that the cure is to actually kill them off. Without them coming back.

Readers, when they read a story, get attached to characters. They don’t want them to die. They’ll probably be pretty mad at you if a character they loved and invested in was killed off. But ignore that. I think it does that character a sense of decency that is denied him/her/it when they are dragged back from the dead time and time again, like some old relative who only ever is carted out of their home on Christmas. Should we really be flogging a dead horse? And is it not, on some level, denying the reader that emotional state.

I’ll give you one example. One book I was reading was horrifically sad and, after a long and dreadful illness he died, leaving his fiancé unmarried and actually unaware that he was dead. His best friend was absolutely devastated. I cried until the book looked like I’d thrown it in a river. And then, he came back from the dead. He’d found a sort of cure just seconds before he’d died and was reborn as something else.

As much as I loved the books, I actually kind of found myself wishing the character had just stayed dead. Not because I disliked him (I hardly ever cry at books) but because it seemed like a bit of a cop out. It was like the author couldn’t stand to lose that character, or she/he was too afraid of the fandom backlash. Certainly, he played a very small part in the book after he was alive again. And then, just to do it again, she cured him of his immortality. Ditto with another book I just read where a character died and re-emerged as a vampire who is actually just impossible to kill off (even though it seems the entire book is trying).

So maybe we need to look at this as saving our characters a little dignity, saving us writers ways of resurrecting them, and saving some readers from feeling cheated.

Yes, there is such a thing as ‘free speech’. I may hate those people who are racist, sexist or homophobic in their own head, but thankfully the subject is very rarely approached over lunch.

Strange then, that a conversation last night with a complete stranger (she was on my course, but still) resulted in a chat about mental health. One student commented on the dismissal of someone who did something unacceptable in their job. That woman who was fired later turned out to have Bipolar Disorder. The other student at our dinner table then made the mistake of saying she thought the woman was ‘crazy’ and that she wouldn’t want anyone who had Bipolar to be looking after her children. Ii was then prompted to remark that if the action was done while the woman was experiencing a manic state, surely it was unfair dismissal?

Up until this point, I had tried to be kind. I had made conversation. I had not shown this girl who thought mental health problems meant people were ‘crazy’ that I was practically shaking with indignation. The girl repeated her earlier comment and the table fell quiet. Perhaps this was what prompted me later on, while talking to a friend about doctors appointments in front of the girl, to mention I needed to have regular appointments because I was being tested for bipolar.

Funnily enough, the girl went absolutely white, stared at me, and spent the rest of the evening looking suitably shame-faced.

What I do find really strange, is that all of us at that table are doing a subject at university that is generally thought to be quite liberal. How can someone sit and emotionally discuss the evils of topics such as segregation and the need for equality, when they don’t actually believe in it themselves? It seems pretty backward to me, and, on some level, this girl must have thought so too, otherwise she wouldn’t have reacted like she did when I said that.

And, while I may or may not have Bipolar, I am perfectly unashamed of who I am. My problems do not define me, they just make me myself. And I’ve always been a person who is unable to deal with those small-minded, prejudiced people who don’t have the capacity to think in a civilized way. Therefore, if you’re silly enough to say something to a complete stranger over Thanksgiving dinner, you can rest assured you should either be willing to defend what you say or shut up.

And maybe, in these situations, it really is best to keep opinions to yourself.

Okay, now that I’ve been fully introduced to uni and the joys of sitting referencing for hours on end (I really hope you can understand why I chose my username by now) I’ve decided to concentrate on reading and writing again!

Actually, I’m not entirely sure why I bothered to write a whole blog post about this, except that I’m excited! I’ve already started work on another novel called A Spill of Ink. This one will be a horror :) I’ve been a little bit stuck on the plot, but luckily for me I have been raised on Stephen King books by a father who also loves reading horror books, so my phone call to him went something like this:

Me: Dad, I wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year. But I got stuck. I have no way of finishing it on time, but still.

Dad: What was your plot?

Me: Basically, it’s about a recluse with a typewriter.

Dad: What about… hang on let me think. Hmm, blood! How about it includes lots of murders and this could happen *SPOILER* and he could think this is happening but really there’s loads of murder.

Me: That sounds great. Hey listen…

Dad: And how about *vividly describes an idea for a really twisted plot twist*

Me: You are sick.

Dad: *Evil laugh.*

Honestly folks, my uni professor knows him as Stephen-King-Guy because he spent all of the open day appointment talking about the books in my professor’s room (I’m doing American Lit, so it isn’t much of a surprise).

But yeah, wait ’til you see the plot of this one. This is what happens when you pass horror books on to your kids.